In my forthcoming book, Rummage, I look at some objects designed to be reused or refilled, such as milk bottles. Our pens have suffered a similar fate.

Rummage is peopled with a motley band of émigrés; oddballs; bankrupts; criminals; pyromaniacs; dipsomaniacs; and dreamers, as well as scientists, housewives, politicians, and journalists. Some sadly didn’t make the cut. Philip James Luntley is one of those.

How to decipher a plank.

Rummage is full of fires. Trades involving reuse and recycling were often dangerous. By the start of the last century fire salvage teams existed in many British cities, and much that could be recovered was sold on.